This invention relates to an integrated automated data entry and display system having a hand held portable alphanumeric character reading input device (wand), an optical character recognition unit and display apparatus.
Systems which combine wands, display devices and computer technology are now commercially available, e.g., the system described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,735,350. Such available systems provide significant advantages over the older methods and apparatus for data entry. Typically, these older methods of data entry involve an operator manually keying coded information onto computer or tab cards, into a display, directly into a computer processor or onto some computer related storage media such as magnetic tape or a disc. This manual keying operation is very time consuming and involves high risk of human error both in the initial coding of the information to be entered for display or processing and in the manual keying of the coded information.
Prior art wand systems have changed the manner of data entry for certain special types of information. In these prior art systems a wand is used to scan coded information (e.g., bar code) and to generate electrical signals which correspond to the optical characteristics of the scanned bar code. This technique greatly reduces the chances for error in data entry since an operator has only to move the wand across a document bearing the coded information of interest. Moreover, wand scanning is a much speedier procedure than having an operator read and then manually key the coded information.
The major limitation of these prior art wand display processing system is, of course, that they are only capable of entering for display and transmitting for processing previously coded information. Thus, these prior art systems cannot be used to read ordinary typed or printed documents such as reports, memoranda, letters, checks, bonds, etc. As the vast majority of documents that are routinely used in business are not in coded form but are simply typed or printed in humanly readable form, this is a severe limitation.
Recently, some attempts have been made to overcome this deficiency of prior art wand systems and to provide wands capable of photo-electrically reading humanly readable printed or typed characters. For example, the Keytronic 1200 Series Wand, now commercially available, is capable of generating electrical signals which correspond to the optical characters of ordinary printed or typed characters.
In addition, character recognition equipment which is capable of recognizing certain printed or typed characters is commercially available. However, most of the character recognition equipment available has been used not in conjunction with wand scanners but in combination with fixed scanning mechanisms into which the documents to be read are inserted.
Prior to the present invention, some wand-recognition unit systems were also available, but it is believed that these were limited in capability to reading and recognizing numeric information and some special alpha characters in the O.C.R.A. font.
It is believed that prior to the present invention, there has not been available any integrated automated data entry systems comprising a wand, recognition unit and associated display which are capable of automatically wand-reading, recognizing, displaying and transmitting full sets of alpha-numeric characters of various styles and fonts. Thus, the need for a system capable of wand-reading, recognizing and displaying alpha-numeric characters of various types and styles has gone unfulfilled.
The need for such a system and a method of utilizing it is especially acute in the banking industry. In banks at present, each day hundreds of thousands of checks, bonds and other paper are read and verified manually prior to various types of automatic processing. These types of papers normally contain various styles of printed or typed alpha-numeric information (e.g., payor, payee, face value, issuing bank, credit, debit, etc.). In some large banks the manual reading and verifying process now occupies literally thousands of clerical workers. It is thus an inordinately expensive procedure. In addition, the manual reading and verifying procedure involves high risk of human error. Many current banking operations also involve the keying of data appearing on bank paper (i.e., checks, bonds, etc.) prior to automatic processing. This manual process also is time consuming, expensive and is subject to high risk of human error.
Accordingly, it is an object of this invention to provide an integrated automated data reading, recognizing, entry and display system having a hand held wand for scanning and reading alpha-numeric character bearing documents, a character recognition unit, and associated display equipment whereby it will be possible to read, recognize, verify and display alpha-numeric characters of various styles and fonts by simply moving the wand across the documents bearing the characters of interest.
It is a further object of the invention to provide such an integrated system in which wand-scanning is able to effect the generation of a range of electrical signals corresponding to the scanned characters' optical characteristics the same as those generated by data entry of the scanned characters by ordinary keying of these characters on a standard computer keyboard terminal. This allows for the interchangeability of wands and keyboard terminals in the system of the present invention so that both wands and keyboard terminals may be used together in the system. In such a system when poor quality characters appear on a document to be scanned and as a result cannot be accurately photo-electrically read, they may be manually read and keyed in the conventional manner.